Turnabout Conquest
by BioKraze
Summary: Subjugating a planet and its people is far easier than you think. Zim learns this the hard way. Oneshot.


Invader Zim_, its concepts and personalities are copyrighted by Nickelodeon/Viacom. I, _BioKraze_, own nothing save the original plot of this fanfiction._

"You lose, space boy."

Dib held a plasma cannon to Zim's head, forcing the Irken to choose how he would die. The weapon was easily a mass and a half of the human's head in size, a powerful weapon to fear when facing the business end. It wasn't fair, Zim thought, how a human could change so quickly. How he could subjugate these filthy stinkbeasts faster and more effectively than any superior Alien life form. Zim resented the fact that Dib had bested the Irken Invader at his own game. He still couldn't believe that Dib had murdered his family in cold, uncaring blood. Gaz and Membrane lay in the human's old home, split asunder, peppered with the burns of a thousand laser beams and pierced with two dozen sharpened knives of cheap plastic. If the human had once possessed a heart, the Invader thought, he had long since ripped it from the safety of his chest cavity.

The Alien Invader wasn't thinking as straight as he could have. If he had been of a more rational mind, Zim could easily kill the Dib-Shit where he stood and claim the massive operation as his own. The world was almost cleansed of humans as it was. It would be smeet's play to call the Armada and finish the job with the Organic Sweep. But the sight of the teenaged human, clad in battle armour as black as his heart, as sharp as his mind and decorated with ornate spines, had reached into Zim and touched a part of his squeedlyspooch that he thought lay dormant his entire life. Somehow, the miserable Earth boy had tapped into the Irken's primal element of fear...

Dib advanced, the heavy gun never wavering from the Irken's head. Zim took a step back, and almost fell 150 floors to his death. The two rivals stood atop a docking aerie on the grand structure that was the human's palace of misery and death. At the top of the world, Zim sought to fight Dib for the right to conquer Earth. Yet he had been surprised by the Earth boy's tactics. Dib was prepared, eager even, to finish the job he had assigned himself ever since that fateful day atop the roof of his old home. For once in his life, Zim was afraid of the power Dib showed. He couldn't help but admire the wormbaby's technique. If he were Irken, he would have made the perfect Invader.

They were standing at the very top of the tower, the Alien invader and the self styled Master of Shadows. How had their rivalry as invader and saviour turned into a race to destroy the Earth? Another step, and Zim had to deploy his spider legs just to stay alive.

Zim realised that he had been outclassed. He had truly lost at his own game. But if Dib really believed the treacherous Irken, then he was about to fall with his enemy.

"Well, Zim? Any last words?" Dib's crazed smile had been the most effective part of his campaign of terror and death. Those who survived the Master of Shadows and his fearsome warrior constructs would speak in sibilant whispers of the cold, lingering death the smile promised. Zim was surprised that the humans feared themselves more than they did the mightiest Irken that had ever been smeeted. Yet the Irken Invader wasn't quite ready to admit defeat. His mind flashed upon something he had almost forgotten while in training, a short burst of memory manifesting to save him...or at the very least, knock the human off his pedestal.

_Strike your foe even as he strikes you._

Zim snatched Dib's right leg, grasping the edge of the tower with his left hand. He pulled the human down, then stared into the bloodshot amber irises of his greatest enemy. The Irken's magenta eyes squinted into a piercing glare, matching the human's glare of unbridled hatred and sheer insanity. As the Alien released his hold on the ledge and tightened his hand on the human's shin, Zim snarled two words into the unsuspecting human's face:

_"Stalemate, Dib..."_

They fell to the ravaged earth below, and all went black...


End file.
